Vancouver play review

Robin Hood by Sebastian Archibald
Directed by Chelsea Haberlin
Itsazoo Productions
Queen Elizabeth Park - at the Bloedel Conservatory
 August 4-7, 10-14 and 17-19, 2010 at 7:00 pm.
Run extended  - 25th to 28th August

Vancouver, BC: It is definitely becoming one of  Vancouver's  summer theatre traditions - a promenade play by Itsazoo Productions in Queen Elizabeth Park. With the natural scenery of the park as the stage, the audience follows members of the company along pathways and grassy areas as the story moves from scene to scene. Company playwright Sebastian Archibald adapts and creates the stories from varied sources.

Last year's show was drawn from The Canterbury Tales. This year Archibald has taken the story of the medieval folkloric hero, Robin Hood, and his Sherwood Forest gang and set it in contemporary Vancouver.  The premier, Nottingham (played by Archibald) and his pal MLA, Rich White (I kid you not) played by David Benedict Brown, are planning a Big Deal event to put the city on the map, and in the process get themselves re-elected. To succeed they need lots of money, which they get  by cutting funding for everything else. They also want to clean up the streets and get the drug dealers, petty thieves and the homeless out of sight.  And they have just the person to do this, taser-happy Chief Gisbourne (Julia Church), helped by cop (Mel Brown) and other cops.

Herr Beckmann's People by Sally Stubbs
Directed by Katrina Dunn
A Flying Start production from Playwrights Theatre Centre and Touchstone Theatre
Playwrights Theatre Centre Studio
June 10-19, 2010

Vancouver, BC: The world premiere production of Herr Beckmann's People by Vancouver playwright, Sally Stubbs, is on this week at Festival House on Granville Island. A thought-provoking play sensitively performed by a strong cast, this is well worth seeing.

The play explores the choices made by a once close-knit family in Germany, before and during World War II, and how these choices continue to reverberate in the family psyche almost three decades later. A question that has been pondered ever since the realities of the Holocaust became known, is "how could ordinary people in an educated, cultured nation, participate in or facilitate the brutalities that were committed against their fellow human beings?"

The Misanthrope - a new adaptation of Moliere's play
by Tony Harrison
Directed by C.W. (Toph) Marshall
United Players
Jericho Arts Centre
June 4 to 27, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  British playwright Tony Harrison's version of Moliere's The Misanthrope has an interesting history that culminated in United Players getting to produce the world premiere of this adaptation.  Harrison first adapted The Misanthrope for London's National Theatre in 1973.  The current version of his script was commissioned for the Old Vic Theatre but the death of the director in 2006  shelved the project, and Marshall was able to get the rights to stage it for the first time, in Vancouver.

From a production perspective I think that The Misanthrope ends the United Players Season on a high note. The performances were excellent, the set  (a modern apartment in Washington) designed by Kyla Gardiner worked well and Jenny Lang's costumes were terrific, especially the gorgeous sexy dresses worn by the seductive Sally Mann (Lara Isaacson).  The sound design  by Dave Campbell has some interesting music choices - more about that in a bit.

At  the Corner of Virtue and Sexmore
by William Maranda
Directed by Elizabeth McLaughlin
William Maranda  Productions
Studio 16
April 23 to May 7

The Breath of Life by David Hare
Directed by Adam Henderson
United Players of Vancouver
Jericho Arts Centre
Apr 2 -25, 2010

Vancouver, BC: I finally managed to see the last of the four plays with "great roles for older women"  featured in Vancouver  within the past 4 months, as alluded to in my Preview of Collected Stories. Starting with the Arts Club's, Mrs. Dexter & her Daily in January, this coincidental "series" of plays includes  Queen Lear at  Presentation House in March, and  Collected Stories at PAL Theatre and Breath of Life, both this month.

Each play had a cast of two women. And in two of the four (Mrs Dexter and Breath of Life), both roles were for "veteran" actresses. In Queen Lear and Collected Stories, the interaction was between a younger student and an older woman. All four plays were heavily focused on the relationship between the two characters rather than being event driven. And what I find most fascinating is that all except Mrs. Dexter, were written by male playwrights. Sounds like there is an interesting idea for a Masters thesis in Drama somewhere in this topic.

Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
Directed by Mel Tuck
PAL Theatre
April 14 to 17, 21 to 24, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  Well I have now seen three of the four plays I mentioned in my  Preview of Collected Stories. Plays with satisfyingly meaty roles for "veteran actresses." Ruth Steiner in Collected Stories is such a character and, in the opening night show,  Karen Austin did full justice to the role.

Collected Stories, by American playwright, Donald Margulies (who teaches playwriting at Yale School of Drama) premiered in New York in 1997 and won a Drama Desk nomination for Best play. it is beautifully constructed to show the changing relationship between successful writer/ professor, Ruth Steiner and the young student Lisa (Deborah English) who  becomes her protege, her friend and ultimately her rival.

We first encounter Ruth and Lisa on the occasion of their initial meeting when Lisa is an awe-struck student and Ruth, a confident if weary, teacher of creative writing. The story unfolds through successive interactions over the course of six years, marked by a change of calendar on the wall of Ruth's apartment, where the entire play but one scene takes place.

Refuge of Lies
Written and directed by Ron Reed
Pacific Theatre Company
Pacific Theatre,
April 9 - May 1, 2010

Vancouver, BC: Refuge of Lies is the kind of play that makes theatre exciting for me.   It tells a great story, has strong characters struggling with profound life questions and has the power to engender intense discussions as well as individual explorations of  one's personal sense of morality. Throw in a number of excellent performances and powerful staging under the direction of the playwright himself, and you have a riveting drama.

As Reed states, his impetus to write this play originated sixteen years ago when UBC botanist and Mennonite, Jacob Luitjens, was extradited to the Netherlands for war crimes committed some fifty years earlier, during the second world war. Reed took  the title and theme for this play from the lines of  Isaiah 28:7 - " And I will make justice the line... and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.”

While the play grew out of the Luitjens story (and that of others like him), Reed emphasizes that the play is not biographical but more about the emotional conflicts stirred up in the playwright himself  in response to the events.  And the different degrees to which these conflicts spill over into  each audience member adds to the power of the piece.

Trunk
Written and directed by Jeremy Waller
Box Studio
Craning Neck Theatre
April 9 to 17, 2010

Vancouver, BC: Trunk is an original play by Vancouver playwright/director Jeremy Waller. Selected for workshopping through the  2009 Playwright's Colony at BC's Playwrights Theatre Centre, this is its premiere production.

Staged in the Box Sudio - a large "white box " space, presently configured with seating for just over 20 people per show, the dominant set piece is a two tiered metal scaffold on wheels,  with white sheeting hiding the interior or drawn back to reveal the skelton of the structure.

A large battered trunk also features prominently - on the floor, or swinging, suspended like a pendulum, from the scaffold.

This is THE TRUNK - metaphor for the suppressed fears, anxiety and anger that, compounded by obsessive religiosity,  turns Dylan into a violently abusive husband and father. The pain he inflicts on his wife and children devastates their lives and continues into the third generation.

At least that is what I think this play is about - that the effect of profound psychological dysfunction is felt far beyond the next generation. 

However I must confess that while I felt the anger, the energy and the passion reverberate in the room along with David Mesiha's often pounding original music,  I did not always follow the story and the transitions in time and space were often disconcerting and too abstract for my straining mind to get.

So with that caveat I will continue and if I get anything wrong I encourage the writer, cast or dramaturgs or others who have seen the show, to comment and point out my error. Or if you prefer you can review my review on the ReviewFromTheHouse Facebook Fan Page.

Where's Charley?
Book  by George Abbott. Music & Lyrics by Frank Loesser
Directed by Dean Paul Gibson
Musical Direction by Steven Greenfield
Choreography by Shelley Stewart Hunt
Studio 58
Mar 25 to Apr 18, 2010

Vancouver, BC: I always love attending the  shows at Studio 58 because regardless of the genre they are performing, the student cast always exudes the vitality and joie de vivre that comes from doing something they love to do. Tonight's show was no exception.

Where's Charley is a musical farce based on the play, Charley's Aunt by English playwright, Brandon Thomas. The play premiered in 1892 and had record breaking runs in England and later on Broadway. Abbott and Loesser's musical adaptation, Where's Charley, directed by Abbott, opened on Broadway in 1948.

Loesser is probably best known for his marvelously hummable melodies and clever lyrics in his 1950 musical, Guys and Dolls, and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize winning How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.

I mention this because sometime between 1948 and 1950 Loesser must have been blessed by  Euterpe, the Muse of Music and later, also the Muse of Lyric Poetry. How else could he come up with the marvellous sound-track of Guys and Dolls?

Queen Lear by Eugene Stickland
Directed by Colleen Winton
Western Gold Theatre and Presentation House Theatre
Presentation House
Mar 25 to Apr 10, 2010

Vancouver,BC:  Memory - what a powerful emotional factor in so many ways. Is there anyone among us mature (never "older") individuals who does not fear  loss of memory as a foreshadowing of loss of mind? I know that every time I can't for the moment recall the name of the lead character in the book I just read, or an actor in a play I reviewed last year, I can feel that  my RAM is failing but there is no store where I can buy an upgrade as I can for my computer.

But we can laugh off  these memory lapses  as minor incidents. For an actor whose biggest nightmare would be to come up blank with lines on stage - wow- how much more frightening an age-related decline in memory would be.

In a heart-wrenching performance, Shirley Broderick conveys the anguish of knowing that one - and one's ability to learn - is not what it was at fifteen!

Broderick plays Jane, a "not-old"  aging actress who is to play Lear in an all-female production. She arranges for Heather, the schoolgirl daughter of her deceased best friend, to help her learn her lines.  In the process, both learn to look at life a little differently.